


Three Ghosts

by vondrostes



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, post-S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 04:28:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13450557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vondrostes/pseuds/vondrostes
Summary: After emptying his home of any needless distractions, Tommy Shelby manages to find himself in possession of not just one but two restless spirits--and discovers that he might be the third after all.





	Three Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclonerollingstone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclonerollingstone/gifts).



> First Peaky fic & I wrote it completely on a whim at the behest of @anticyclonerollingstone so thanks for that.
> 
> Follow me on Twitter for more writing goodies: @vondrostes (personal) & @TerranAlleen (writing updates)

Ever since Tatiana had shown up unexpectedly at his door one blustery Sunday morning, her long dark hair whipping in the wind as she stood steadfast on Tommy’s front steps without saying a word, the Shelby Manor had known no peace. Tommy had given her a week—a week had quickly turned into a month, and still she lingered.

It was like living with a restless spirit, listening to her roam the halls throughout the night, sometimes breaking things for no apparent reason than some unfathomable royal madness.

Tommy promised himself after the third time she’d left a trail of shattered china throughout the corridors of the house that he’d throw her out himself, no matter the cost, but three weeks later, she was still there, and Tommy had grown accustomed to her presence in spite of himself.

And now somehow he’d ended up with not only one, but two unwanted guests, after Tatiana had invited Alfie without even bothering to consult Tommy first. On this particular morning, despite the late hour, Alfie had still yet to rise and Tommy had taken advantage of that fact by using the rather unusual quiet to get some work done in the study.

Tatiana however, seemed determined to distract him at all costs. She never seemed to sleep, but often catnapped on the sofa in the study, as she was doing now. With her legs tucked up under her, Tommy couldn’t help but glance up every so often to catch a glimpse of her pale thighs, starkly contrasted against the dark brown leather.

He wondered if she was trying to seduce him on purpose. It would make sense; it was the practical thing to do, of course. For all she knew, desire was the only thing standing in the way of Tommy throwing her out to fend for herself again—a death sentence, he’d heard, now that her family had begun to turn on each other—or even stopping him from just killing her himself.

They hadn’t slept together since That Night, as Tommy preferred to think of it (if he was forced to think of it at all), and he had no plans to change that any time soon—but a look every now and then wouldn’t hurt anything. Or so he’d convinced himself.

Her eyes were open but still heavy-lidded with sleep when he looked up at her again. He met her gaze unflinchingly, and she blinked and yawned, pushing herself up off of the sofa with a catlike stretch.

“Tea?” she inquired, and the way she said it made Tommy feel like a servant at her behest.

He stood anyway and made for the door without a word of protest. It was easier to give in to Tatiana’s whims than it was to deal with the inevitable fallout of her anger. Something stopped him though before he could leave the room, a feeling, something he couldn’t quite identify. Tommy turned to look over his shoulder at Tatiana, who had again picked up the book she’d borrowed from the library and resumed absently turning its pages, not really reading it at all.

 “What is it?” she asked, glancing up at him once she’d realized he hadn’t left.

“It’s nothing,” he told her, though Tommy was already starting to doubt his own answer before he’d even finished speaking.

When he reached the kitchens a few minutes later, he shooed the maid out and prepared the tea himself, savouring the precious few minutes of absolute silence.

It wasn’t long before the much-desired reprieve suddenly became unbearable. Tommy thought he understood now why Tatiana broke everything she so much as touched. Maybe she just needed the noise.

Tommy’s hands trembled as he poured the tea into one of the remaining cups and added a sprinkle of sugar, the way he knew she liked it.

But when he walked back into the study, Tatiana was nowhere to be found, the book—Ovid’s Tristia—lying discarded on the futon, spine out, the last pages she’d read pressed flat against the seat to hold her place.

Tommy didn’t call out for her. He was well-versed now in the games the princess played. He knew where she was hiding.

“Tatiana?” he said quietly after inching open the door to his bedroom. It was dark inside, the curtains drawn over the window leaving the room a yawning void, but Tommy knew she was there.

“I want you to kiss me,” said her voice in the darkness, and the way it echoed softly in the silence reminded Tommy of haunted dreams.

“How can I kiss you if I don’t know where you are?” he replied as he took a tentative step inside. The princess’s fondness for theatrics came as no surprise. Tommy certainly couldn’t fault her for that.

A wraithlike hand shot out and seized his, tugging him further into the room. She pulled his fingers up to brush against her face, till they were tracing over her lips. He leaned down and pressed his own to her cheek.

“Not like that.”

“Then show me,” Tommy commanded.

She met his open mouth with teasing bites, a swirl of tongue, angry fierce heat that drove away the icy centre in him, if only for a brief moment.

Then the lamp by the bed suddenly clicked on.

The last thing Tommy in his own bed was Alfie lying naked against the sheets with his ankles crossed and hands folded over his chest, completely exposed in the warm glow of the lamplight to Tommy’s eyes.

Which he just as quickly covered.

“For Christ’s sake, Alfie,” Tommy said, continuing to shield his face with one hand for safety. “Could you put your cock away?”

“I have to tell you, Thomas, I don’t much care for what your Christ thinks of my cock,” was the not-unexpected reply. “Though I’m a tad surprised by your Puritan attitude, right? What’s this about, then?”

“Didn’t want to risk offending your delicate Jewish sensibilities,” Tommy replied with a bit of pique, still refusing to uncover his eyes.

“Nah, mate, there’s no danger of that,” Alfie replied. “I told you already, I’m a sodomite. I have to accept what I am, and you have to accept what you are, don’t you?”

“And what is that?” Tommy asked, but Alfie didn’t answer.

“Tommy?” Tatiana said softly. He could tell from the sound of her voice that she was still standing right there next to him. Gentle hands wrapped around his fingers and pulled them away from his eyes.

He kept them shut, ignoring the light hitting his eyelids, pretending that he wasn’t acting like a child.

Tatiana sighed. The sound of the sheets rustling, the bed creaking, bare feet striking the floor, followed.

“Are you presentable?” Tommy asked as a shadow blocked out the lamplight, his voice slightly too high to effectively feign nonchalance.

It was Tatiana who answered. “You don’t need to be embarrassed,” she said “I want you to see.”

There was a particular irony that she would demand this of him, when she knew full-well that he couldn’t see, not like he used to at any rate, and in a way it was her fault. She was the reason Tommy saw ghosts at every turn, flashes and blurs at the edge of his vision, gone when he turned to face them.

She nudged aside the silk robe clinging loosely to her shoulders, letting it slip down to pool around her feet, leaving Tommy the only one still standing there still fully-dressed.

“I see that you’re evidently fucking Mr. Solomons in my bed,” Tommy offered levelly. He was certain that if he acknowledged the apparent reality of the situation—that Alfie and Tatiana were conspiring to seduce him for reasons he had yet to suss out—his already tenuous grasp on his own sanity would snap, leaving him an empty human shell containing some kind of base primal element, much like the two beings standing before him, naked and expectant.

“Does that upset you?” Tatiana asked, stepping closer until there was no distance at all between them.

Tommy was aware that the door was still standing open behind him, that he could turn and leave and make his escape, and that they could all tacitly agree to never speak of this again.

He didn’t move.

“How long?”

Tatiana’s smile quirked up along the left corner of her mouth. “Since the first night he stayed here,” she said. “Beautiful things belong together, no?”

Tommy glanced at Alfie, who was still standing a few feet from the edge of the bed and tried to find something in the man worthy of being called beautiful. He was scarred, haggard, and decaying; hardly capable of walking under his own power, but still there was something about him that Tommy saw also in Tatiana, despite all their apparent differences. Perhaps that’s what she had meant by ‘beautiful things’.

Her hand, still holding his, dragged his fingers up against to place a gentle kiss against his knuckles. “Come to bed, Thomas,” she said quietly. “I want you to touch me.”

She moved the hand she held lower, to her breast, and Tommy shivered, feeling like a young boy again touching a girl for the very first time.

“You don’t even like me,” he pointed out, glancing between Alfie and Tatiana, feeling as if he were speaking to both of them, “and there’s nothing I can offer you that I haven’t—"

“Who are you trying to convince, Tommy?” Tatiana interrupted, pulling his gaze back to meet hers. “Me? Or yourself?”

Tommy didn’t want to answer that question. He didn’t even want to consider it. He didn’t want to think, period. And it seemed like now all he could do was think, his brain moving a mile a minute without him, speeding along through the endless choices, possibilities, through what he could do here in this room, what he could be doing right _now_.

So he kissed her again. And it wasn’t the soft teasing warmth Tatiana had given him before. No, this kiss was raw passion, pure fury. And Tommy matched it ounce for ounce with his own fighting instincts. Until what they were doing could no longer be termed kissing, but instead more aptly labeled as mutually assured destruction.

That’s when Alfie pulled Tatiana away by the chin, the two of them gazing into each other’s eyes as if they were star-crossed lovers instead of natural enemies bound in an alliance of convenience that Tommy himself didn’t fully understand.

“Go slow, love,” he urged. “You don’t want to overwhelm the man, yeah? Surely even in Russia they don’t jump right on the back of a spooked horse and expect not to get thrown off into the snow?”

She stepped back and gave Alfie one of her patented royal glares, clearly not appreciating the livestock-based metaphors he seemed so fond of. They both continued to ignore Tommy still standing between them even as his careful façade quickly crumbled, leaving him just as exposed as the other two without shedding a single article of clothing.

“I never promised to be patient,” she told Alfie with a scowl.

Alfie stared her down. “Get him undressed, then,” he commanded without even looking to Tommy for permission first.

Tommy found himself stood there like a department-store mannequin as Tatiana positioned his arms straight out, quickly shucked his shirt and trousers, and then tossed them carelessly to the floor with her own discarded robe.

His skin felt raw under the intensity of their dual gazes focused upon him and he itched to cover himself, to hide the scars and tattoos littering his body, and only suppressing the urge because he knew it would further antagonize them both.

“Do you want this?” Tatiana asked him, eyes wide and gleaming in the dim lamplight making a concentrated effort to illuminate the heavy atmosphere created by the blackout curtains covering the windows. She wasn’t asking permission. “Do you want us?”

Tommy nodded, suddenly afraid that when he spoke he would find he had no voice left. “Yes,” he managed to eke out. “Yes, I want you.”

Tatiana took him by the hand and gently guided him over to the bed, where the sheets were warm still from where Alfie had lain. Tommy shuddered. He was half-hard already and it wouldn’t take much more to get him all the way there, even with Alfie’s eyes following the two of them like the eyes of God: watchful, silently judging. Tatiana carefully aligned their bodies as she lay down on top of Tommy and straddled his hips, grinding the moist heat of her cunt along his cock.

“I want to ride him,” she said over her shoulder to Alfie.

“Then turn around.”

She lifted herself up and changed positions so that Tommy was now staring at the smooth unblemished flesh of her back. She pressed a hand behind herself against the soft trail of hair that led from Tommy’s belly to groin—leaving goosebumps blossoming in its wake—and using his body to brace herself, she slowly lowered herself onto his cock. The two of them groaned in unison as Tatiana ground herself down against Tommy’s pelvis, his cock buried as deeply inside her as was possible.

Tommy could still see Alfie standing at the foot of the bed even with Tatiana on top of him now, the other man’s naked shoulders glinting dully in the lamplight as he leaned forward to place his chin into the cradle of Tatiana’s beckoning fingers. Tommy could tell that the two were kissing each other, and he ached.

Suddenly they broke apart and Alfie placed both hands on either of Tommy’s thighs without warning as Tatiana began to ride his cock, and Tommy jumped at the unexpected touch. She moved over him with slow sinuous rocking motions that had Tommy gasping for reprieve. Alfie laughed at his torment.

Tommy wondered if Alfie was really content to merely watch as his cock slipped in and out of Tatiana with agonizing slowness. Then he felt the hands on his thighs tighten as a different warm wet pressure teased the base of his cock.

Tatiana cried out loudly and clamped down hard, eliciting a groan from Tommy as she shook and trembled above him.

It was several seconds before Tommy realised that Alfie was eating her out while Tommy was still inside her.

After only minutes of Alfie’s exquisite torture, it seemed Tatiana didn’t even have the strength to move her body anymore, totally focused on trying to hold herself up as Alfie teased her still with teeth and tongue, but even just the spasms of her inner muscles around Tommy’s cock were causing him to inch closer to orgasm and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he came.

His hands forming claws at his sides, Tommy resisted the urge to place them over Alfie’s hands and dug them into the meat of Tatiana’s hips instead. He clung to her for dear life as he came, filling her up, wondering idly in the moment of post-coital bliss if she would get pregnant with his child. Would she keep it, if she did? Would she stay with him then? Would—

Tatiana nearly screamed as Alfie continued licking at her too-sensitive clit in the moment of orgasm, and she clenched down again on Tommy’s softening cock, still inside her. He nearly jack-knifed off the bed, his muscles turning to mulch as one last jolt of painful pleasure shot through him, piercing his core and leaving only shivery aftershocks in its wake.

Tatiana rolled off of Tommy with a sigh and collapsed onto her stomach. Alfie stood up stiffly, still naked as he’d been when Tommy had first entered the room, and Tommy could see his cock straining proudly against his stomach.

“You didn’t come,” Tommy said dumbly, forgetting himself and then blinking up in confusion as the other man carefully knelt down onto the bed, hovering over him.

“So do something about it,” Alfie replied simply, his lips pulling upward into a Cheshire grin.


End file.
